


The Great Beyond Deleted Scenes: Act III Assorted

by ElsieGlass



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Pandemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElsieGlass/pseuds/ElsieGlass
Summary: A small collection of Act III deleted scenes from The Great Beyond Series.
Relationships: Ellie (The Last of Us) & Original Character(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	The Great Beyond Deleted Scenes: Act III Assorted

**Author's Note:**

> This is a small collection of deleted scenes and graphs from [Act III](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564579) of [The Great Beyond](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589026) series, my long-fic based on The Last of Us video game (2013) by the game development studio, Naughty Dog, a Bruce Straley/Neil Druckmann joint.
> 
> The Great Beyond is a work of fan fiction based on The Last of Us video game (2013) by the game development studio, Naughty Dog, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Additional names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
> 
> While this story makes reference to actual events and people, certain characters, characterizations, incidents, locations, and dialogue were fictionalized or invented for purposes of dramatization. With respect to such fictionalization of invention, any similarity to the name or to the actual character or history of any person, living or dead, or any product or entity or actual incident is entirely for dramatic purposes and not intended to reflect on any actual character, history, product, or entity.
> 
> I support the inalienable right to free expression and the inherent value of copyright. I hope my work encourages and inspires writers everywhere to create and make their own works that greatly enrich their lives and the fan fic culture.
> 
> Copyright (c) 2020 by Elsie Glass.
> 
> All rights reserved. 
> 
> ElsieGlassGlass@gmail.com
> 
> [Twitter @ElsieGlass20](https://twitter.com/ElsieGlass20)  
> [Insta @realelsieglass](https://www.instagram.com/realelsieglass/)
> 
> Happy reading! Xo
> 
> [You can find Act I of The Great Beyond here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075489)
> 
> [You can find Act II of The Great Beyond here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22336039)
> 
> [You can find Act III of The Great Beyond here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564579)

**_––––––––––––––_ **

**_The graph below was deleted from[Chapter Four](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564579/chapters/53948530). At Shadow's End, Ellie and Lith talked about the Fireflies and other things, including Lith's provenance. This conversation begins after Lith tells Ellie her story about childhood sexual trauma._ **

**_––––––––––––––_ **

What do I say to that? There are no words of compassion I could give her. She wouldn’t want them anyway. “If it makes you feel any better,” I say, not actually knowing why it should make her feel any better, “I don’t know where I was born or who I was born to."

“You’re an American,” Lith says. “Land of the free, home of the brave.”

“You're an American?” I ask. 

She laughs freely. “What do think I am?”

I don't respond. How should I know? She doesn't look like anyone I've ever known with her long black unruly hair, high cheekbones, and strong jaw. 

“My true blood’s from Normandy,” she says.

“Where’s that?” I ask.

“France.”

“You’re from France?”

“I’m descended from a French trapper. On my father’s side. He made his fortune in fur. Killed and skinned beasts for good money. He came over in the early 1800s with a group of fellow hunters to New Mexico to spy on the Spanish. Pirates searching for gold. He fell into trapping by luck. A contractor for an American trust. They gave him a horse, a canoe, a musket, a dogsled in the winter, and a hound. From Louisiana to Hudson Bay and up the Missouri. Beavers were his currency—muskrat, otter, sable, mink, and fox.

“In the winter he drank away his fortunes at trading posts and gambled the clothes off his back, too fancy to wear in the field—buckskin suits and beaded moccasins. He married two Indians. Cheyenne princesses. The first was the chief’s oldest daughter till he killed her and married the youngest. They had a couple sons—vicious and ugly. That French-Indian mix is mean. They all found their fortunes in ranching. There are those who devour civilization whole and those who rebel. He rebelled. Loudly. After living with the Indians for so long he adopted their dress and their manners, lost his taste for luxury, sought solitude, and moved deeper into the wilderness, hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost. I’m descended from a brute who sought adventure on the outer edges of civilization. Centuries of savagery course my blood. He made his own way and so did I.”

“You’re a bounty hunter,” I say, "just like him.”

“It’s not the same thing,” she says.

“He killed game and sold it. Shot and killed for reward.”

“Believe what you want.”

“He didn’t kill for meat or survival. He killed for money. For greed.”

“He earned his trophies with hard work.”

“It was bounty.”

“It was his job,” she says.

“A job for someone too aimless to get a real one.”

“He laid down his life every day and risked death for his bravery. I proudly bear his legacy, like you should yours.”

I scoff. “I don’t even know if my name or my birthday’s real!”

**_––––––––––––––_ **

**_The graph below was deleted from[Chapter Ten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22564579/chapters/54049939). On the journey to the Rock, Skane and Ellie dozed off, and she awoke to him play-fencing. Then they had a playful conversation about the future._ **

**_––––––––––––––_ **

“It must be really hard living like this,” I say.

“You make it easier,” Skane says. He draws me into his chest and holds onto me tight. Bellies full of quail, we watch the popping embers of the fire till we doze-off. Soon enough, I rouse from a loud snore and he wakes, too. He pulls to his feet, rolls up his sleeves, and strips a bough from a nearby fir tree. He squares before the fire, and starts to parry and lunge. “First, second, third, fourth,” he says, and strikes an imaginary target low and high.

“What’re you doing?” I ask, sitting upright against the saddle.

“Fencing. You think I was born this elegant and graceful? I practiced from my childhood, trained every muscle in my body to be flexible and quick. The most prestigious _salles d’armes_ in Paris. Foil, sabre, l’épée. Classical correct French, and Italian when I felt like being rowdy.” He knifes a hand toward me and pulls me to my feet. He puts the bough in my hand, comes behind me, and encircles my wrist.

“En garde!” he yells and jabs my wrist towards an imaginary target. “The French technique’s pure. Wrist-play’s kept in the narrowest limits possible.” He swivels my wrist and drives us forward. “Pretend there’s an imaginary line. Advance and retreat without deviating from the line. Hold your ground and make gains by the length of your lunge. Advance slowly with feints and deceptions. Simple strokes, disengagements, parries, and counters. It’s easy enough to know how to make a croisé, but quite another thing to execute it cleverly and elegantly.” He interlaces his fingers with mine and kisses my knuckles. “Finger play. It’s all in the grip.”

“But you don't carry a sword,” I say.

“I'm the last of my kind. The Post World has little patience for the judgment of souls. With the sword, you weigh life and death. You take your stand and check your blade. It’s none of my business to decide who’s right or wrong. It’s simple enough to take a life in a single shot. They require little nerve, no muscle, no clear-eyed intelligence. I’ve always found them clumsy and inefficient, less accurate than a blade. Unchivalrous. The weapons of drifters and criminals."

He rakes-up the embers, tosses-in long-burn green logs, and lays the serape blankets over a bed of fragrant fir boughs. Across the fire, the harnessed horse strips bark and munches bunch grass. We bed-down intertwined.

“Twilight of the Gods,” he says. “Our last nightfall together.”

“Where will you go?” I ask.

“Overseas. My parents owned a palazzo in Venice.”

“Where’s that?” I ask.

“Italy.”

“Where’s that?”

“Europe.”

“What’s a palazzo?”

“A house. Commissioned in the seventeenth century, with great Baroque facades overlooking the Grand Canal. It was sold to them by an arriviste clan who’d bought their way into the old Venetian nobility and could no longer maintain the lifestyle. My parents threw legendary parties. It was practically my mother’s sport—an Olympiad. Their parties rivaled the Doges’. Decadent, like before the fall of Rome, large and lavish, with thousands of guests: celebrities, nobility, industrialists, aristocrats, and statesmen. Invitations would go out six months in advance.

“You’d come up through the cloistered courtyard paved in fleur-de-lis mosaics that’d gleefully tip the strongest ankle and destroy the most expensive stilettos. The columns were candle-lit, hung with red amaryllis and white camellias. You’d wind a wide spiral staircase wrapped around a marble statue of a Greek titan holding up the heavens beneath a stained-glass oculus. The ballroom ceiling was covered in frescoes and Venetian chandeliers as large as great whales. The walls were hung with sixteenth century tapestries and nineteenth century coats of arms. The lions of Venice were carved in ice and white doves flitted the ceilings. Men were tall, dark, and well-tailored. Women throbbed sex in prêt-à-porter total-looks and skyscraper heels, hemlines so short they met plunging necklines, like they’d been poured into their dresses.”

“Do you think it’s still like that?” I ask.

“The whole city's probably underwater," he laughs. "I’d try France. There’s a little island off the west coast. My uncle’s.”

“What about the one in Sweden?”

“Not a chance! I need unlimited coffee and champagne to get me through those long dark winters.” 

“And France does?”

“Since Attila stormed it! The whole land’s dug-out like moles. Champagne cellars so big, the grape dynasties passed entire world wars with their kin down there. Built schools, hospitals, even concert halls. They plumbed the archives of vintage stocks every night. On moonless nights, they’d slip back to earth, tend to the harvest, and inspect the vines with mortar shells bursting all around them.” He takes my hand and presses it to his lips. “Come with me. Mornings we’d ride horses, and hunt wild deer and elk. Afternoons we’d wander the salt meadows for fresh oysters and clams, sail across the islands, and explore the cliffs.”

“It’s so far,” I say.

“I can bridge it.”

“How?”

“I’ll take you.”

“Do you think your family's still alive?” I ask.

“My kind always survives. They seek-out a nice comfortable place to lay low when there’s trouble and they come right back when it’s over.” He squeezes my hand. “Come. I’ll give you the life you deserve, the life I could give you. I’ll shelter you from want until your last days on earth. All of our heirs, too.”

I laugh. “You mean our kids?”

“Mink to keep you warm at night, a dresser of perfumed lace underwear, five-course champagne breakfasts, and maids at the push of a button. I’d offer you the family’s diamonds if I could be sure my lesser cousins hadn’t raided the vaults.” He sighs deep. “It was my turn. We’d take them out for white tie and tiara balls. Wouldn’t you like to be an heir to the throne?”

“You’re not allowed to marry a commoner,” I say. “You mother would bribe you.”

He takes my face in his hand. I feel him grow heavy with thoughts. “You carry the markings of a great woman,” he says. “You’re the first thing in this world that ever made me doubt my ability to win whatever I wanted. I’ve done ungentlemanly things I’m not terribly proud of. It was a brutal thing to do. I’ve repented—bitterly. After such a long period of wanting, it was like a terrible sickness. Have you forgiven me?”

I think about this. I’ll be forever indebted to him for guiding me to the Rock. To Joel. “You helped me see the true state of things,” I say.

“I hardly expect we’ll ever see each other again," he says, "but I hope we will. If you ever need me, please come find me. I’d live happily anywhere with you for the rest of my life.” He pulls me into an embrace. A fox barks across the hilltops, wind rustles the firs, and the horse sighs contentedly.


End file.
